ADHD has become speed drug of choice - addictive

[donsu]

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_613.shtml


Legal ADHD Speed becoming drug of choice for Americans




A study published online in the February 2006 Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, which examined data from a 2002 survey of about 67,000 households, estimated that more than 7 million Americans have misused stimulant drugs meant to treat ADHD, and “substantial numbers of teenagers and young adults appear to show signs of addiction, according to a comprehensive national analysis tracking such abuse.”

The statistics are alarming because people are using the drugs recreationally or to boost academic and professional performance. The scientists who published the study concluded that about 1.6 million teenagers and young adults had misused these stimulants during a 12-month period and that 75,000 showed signs of addiction.

Last month, the FDA's Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee held two days of hearings, and after listening to all the testimony and reviewing the data presented, recommended that all ADHD drugs carry a black box warning on increased cardiovascular risks.

This month, the Pediatric Advisory Committee is meeting today and will focus on neuropsychiatric adverse event reports and trial data on ADHD medications. The committee will also receive an update on efforts to better understand cardiovascular adverse events possibly related to ADHD medications, according to the FDA web site.

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drug barons make more money if they can get you addicted

[MuseRider]

1. I can't imagine

being addicted to Ritalin. After taking it for 24 years for Narcolepsy and controlling my dosage to match my schedule I can't imagine being addicted to it.

Perhaps it feels different to people taking it for other reasons. For me it makes me far too jumpy and chatty, not comfortably either.

[noonwitch]

2. I'm not a doctor or scientist, but this is one of those "duh" things

I've been a social worker in children's services for almost 20 years. It is my professional opinion, based on observation, that giving kids pills for ADHD predisposes them for having a substance abuse disorder later in life. There are kids who do need the meds to function, but they are a very small proportion of the overall number of kids taking ADHD drugs.

Things that parents can try prior to trying drugs:

1. Limits on amount of time spent watching tv and/or playing videogames.
2. More home-cooked food and less processed food. McDonalds should be an occasional meal, not more than once a week.
3. Buy the kid a bike, and make him ride it to his friends' houses.
4. Little League. Scouts. Soccer. Music lessons. Dance. Organized activities that also require practice and teach responsibility.

I had a kid I worked with when I was a new worker. In placement and with "medically-minded" foster parents, he was a mess, and was medicated with Ritalin. After we got a home study done on an out-of-state relative, we sent him there, where they lived in the country and had a bunch of kids of their own (the worker from that state told me that they lived like the Waltons. The family enrolled him in regular education (he had been special ed/EI here), put him in Little League and Boy Scouts, got him a new bike and made sure he played hard with his cousins every day to help him channel his energy better. After two months, he no longer showed any signs of ADHD.

A lot of our kids get labelled ADHD. They're foster kids, and many have been seriously traumatized. I don't think that they are always being properly diagnosed. The kid I mentioned had been pretty badly abused, physically, and his sisters abused sexually. I'm not sure ADHD was the appropriate diagnosis to begin with.

[meow2u3]

3. I took Ritalin for ADHD for 16 years

I was taken off it last year.